Religion and public policy

Pakistan, the West and religious minorities

IN ITS latest global report, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) described Pakistan as presenting one of the "worst situation(s) in the world" in respect of liberty of thought.

Religion and speech

THIS has been a mixed week for freedom of speech in Britain. On one hand, a sharp-tongued street preacher has been found guilty and punished, albeit quite mildly, under a piece of legislation which many regard as dangerously illiberal. On the other, gay-rights campaigners and opponents of religous power have made a robust, Voltaire-like response...by defending the preacher's right to say things which they consider bigoted, appalling and offensive.

The preacher in question is Michael Overd, an evangelical Christian with strong views on the sinfulness of homosexuality and the wrongness of Islam (except, presumably, on the question of homosexuality).

Buddhism, China and Russia

MY COLLEAGUE Banyan reports in the print edition this week on the surreal spat involving China and the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism. The Dalai Lama, who is nearly 80, has been denounced by Chinese officials and media for daring to suggest that he might not be reincarnated after his death. A European-based follower of the Tibetan leader, who knows him well, explains the position thus: "If there is no useful role for him to play spiritually, educationally, culturally, then there is no point in [his] coming back as the 15th Dalai Lama.

Religious archaeology

IT IS now four years since a respected scholar in Jordan said a mysterious collection of leaden book-like objects might be the biggest discovery in the field of religious archaeology since 1947, when the Dead Sea Scrolls gradually started coming to light in caves east of Jerusalem. It will soon be three years since a group of 38 distinguished academics wrote to The Times of London regretting the fact that the authorities in Jordan had, after the initial excitement, relapsed into silence and declined to issue any further information about the finds.

Fasting and food

DROP into the McDonald's branch in Syntagma, the central square of Athens, at this time of year and you will find that "fast food" has a double meaning. Along with the familiar burgers and fries, customers have the option of meals that conform with the dietary rules observed by Orthodox Christians during Lent: essentially vegan, though shellfish are allowed. Spring rolls and shrimp burgers loom large. Greek-owned chains tempt the pious with spinach in filo pastry and (a real ascetic feat) potato pies.

The Armenian genocide

IN THE early 20th century, concern for the fate of the Armenians was often presented in the Western world as a matter of inter-Christian solidarity. If you were an American Protestant church-goer, you probably heard sermons about the suffering endured by your co-religionists in the Near and Middle East. American missionaries were by that time well-established in the Ottoman lands, tending to the education and welfare of Christian communities in far-flung places.

The pope and the elderly

POPE FRANCIS made some remarks this week about a big contemporary problem—the neglect of older people by their children and younger relatives—that bore all his hallmarks. The tone of his comments was at once humane, almost folksy, somewhat politically radical, quite traditional and quite shocking.

Failing to look after old folk was not just a bad habit, he told an "audience" of 20,000 people in Rome, it was a mortal transgression: in other words the sort of sin that can consign you to hell, eternal punishment, if you fail to repent for it before you die. He made the point in both an anecdotal way, and in a more theological way.

Freedom and scepticism

These are bad times for outspoken sceptics in countries where religion is brutally enforced, either by governments or fanatics with a self-appointed mission. Last week the atheist blogger Avijit Roy, who was of Bangladeshi origin but lived in the United States, was hacked to death at a book fair in Dhaka. It has been reported in Saudi Arabia that a young man in his twenties has been sentenced to death after he posted a video of himself ripping up a copy of the Koran.

In the far more comfortable environment of the United States, meanwhile, religious believers and sceptics denounce one another as though they were the greatest banes of one another’s lives.

Exceptionalism

AMERICA and Russia don't agree on many things these days, but on both sides of the old (and re-emerging) cold-war divide, you can hear a common concern, one that smaller countries sometimes find hard to understand. It is summed up by the word "exceptionalism". In both Washington and Moscow, those who hold or seek power like to speculate out loud on whether their country's very existence serves a higher, divine purpose. The parallel shoudn't be pushed too far, but the language is sometimes similar.

Of course exceptionalism—the idea that there is something extra-special about one's own nation, tribe or family—is a common human sentiment that comes in many forms.

Islam in Britain

WE ARE certainly not Charlie, but most of us (not all) can relate to Ahmed. That would be one way of summarising the results of a survey of British Muslim opinion that was published today by the BBC.

You'll remember that in the immediate aftermath of last month's terrorist outrages in Paris (the killing of 12 people at Charlie Hebdo magazine, and then an attack on a kosher supermarket, where four people died) many different slogans popped up. "Je suis Ahmed" was a popular alternative (or complement) to the near-ubiquitous "Je suis Charlie".

Britain, London and Christianity

CLOSE your eyes and think of Christianity in Britain: especially if you don't have much contact with the real thing, images of village fetes, ancient stone chapels and settled communities in genteel but unnoticeably slow decline may still come to mind. They fit in with a certain rose-tinted vision of Britain itself, to which Britons and Anglophiles cling, even though they know perfectly well that far more people live within sight and earshot of a motorway than in cottages surrounded by tweeting songbirds.

Pope Francis and the Copts

IT IS an almost provocative way of looking at things, but one that the pope has adopted several times. It came up yesterday when he was speaking to a delegation from Scotland about the 21 Coptic Christians from Egypt who were recently murdered by Islamist terrorists. According to Vatican Radio, he said:

The blood of our Christian brothers and sisters is a testimony which cries out to be heard...It makes no difference whether they be Catholics, Orthodox, Copts or Protestants. They are Christians! Their blood is one and the same. Their blood confesses Christ.

Religion, Europe and Denmark

THE terrorist shootings in Denmark are the latest skirmish in Europe's ongoing contest between freedom of expression and radical Islamists, and as with January's attacks in Paris, they targeted both the press and the Jewish community. On Saturday afternoon, one person was killed and three police officers wounded when a gunman opened fire on a free-speech debate at a Copenhagen cafe (pictured) hosted by a controversial Swedish cartoonist, Lars Vilks. Hours later, a Jewish man was killed and another two police were injured near a synagogue. Today, police said they had killed the presumed perpetrator of both attacks after he opened fire on them.

Gender, violence and religion

A COUPLE of days ago, a senior African cleric was holding forth on the need to combine religious instruction with, in the broadest sense, sex education. Both at home and at school, declared Archbishop Henri Isingoma, boys must be taught about the higher purpose of sex as "the way God wanted to make the human race continue". Another acute problem, he added, was "ignorance of the responsibilities of men towards women." He was speaking in a webinar organised by a department of the global Anglican church, drawing in clergy and church workers from their own and other Christian confessions.

Christians in Iraq

WHAT do the ancient Christian communities of the Middle East, many of them threatened with extinction in lands where they have survived since the dawn of their faith's existence, most need from their co-religionists in the West? Some want more military support, but others take a different view. That difference emerged during a visit to London by Archbishop Bashar Warda, the top Catholic cleric in Erbil, the only Iraqi city where Christians live in significant numbers.

At a meeting yesterday in the House of Lords, co-organised by the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need, the archbishop reminded people of the hard realities facing his flock.